prologue
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T
he moment I spotted the cars, I knew it was trouble.
Four of them bearing down on us, all coming from different directions. Dark-colored sedans, two or three guys riding in each. Two pulled in front of me and two zoomed up
from behind, boxing me up like a take-home pizza.
No warning, just a cold stop.
I had known they’d be on the lookout for strangers, particularly strangers who looked like we did. Julio, my informant,
was a tall, mulatto Dominican with a semicrippled left arm, a
gift from the Dominican secret police. He was wearing denim
pants, a dark work shirt, construction boots, and a black beret.
I was dressed in a black polo shirt and denim vest embossed
with the likeness of a black panther. The panther, set against a
round, red background, had yellow death rays shooting out of
its eyes. I also wore a black beret and big, heavy motorcycle
boots. Together, we looked like major trouble.
We had been cruising Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, looking for
Julio’s connection, a heavy-duty gun and drug runner. Julio had
planned to introduce me to him as a Mafia-connected Cuban
who brokered big-money deals.
As soon as the four cars cut us off, I told Julio to put his
hands on the dashboard. I placed my own on the steering
wheel, taking care to keep them in full view.
Nothing would piss them off more than not being able to
see our hands. I knew the drill.
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Louis Diaz
“Stay cool,” I said to Julio. “These guys are gonna toss us.”
Out of the unmarked cars poured eight or nine plainclothes cops, all with guns drawn, all crouching in combat
stances. Taking cover behind their car doors, they began yelling
their jingle: “Police! Don’t move, motherfuckers!”
After a minute, one cop moved to the passenger side and
yanked Julio out. Another, the biggest of the bunch, moved to
the driver’s side and aimed his pistol at my left temple. Six
feet-plus, 230 pounds, short-cropped hair, Irish from head to
toe, he resembled the old-time heavyweight Jim Braddock. He
looked a decade older than I did.
With my hands glued to the steering wheel, I quietly turned
to him and said, “Hey, not for nuthin’, but I’m on the job.”
Eyeing me with about as much credulity as if I had declared myself to be Mother Teresa, he shouted to his backups,
“Hey, asshole over here says he’s on the job!’”
Then he spat at me, “Get the fuck outta the car!”
I opened the door slowly and, with my hands up in the air,
I stepped out. The moment I did, the cop grabbed me by my
vest, whirled me around, and slammed me up against the side
of the car. He banged my head on the hood and kicked my feet
apart.
“Listen, officer,” I said, “I’m packing.”
The cop shouted to the others, “Hey, now this shithead
says he’s carrying!”
Then he threw a couple of stiff shots to my head, rattling
my brains around my skull. After that came half a dozen
punches to my kidneys. I winced from the pain.
While I struggled to keep my wits about me, he patted me
down and came up with my gun, which inspired him to throw
a few more roundhouse blows to my kidneys. For several days
after, I would piss blood.
DANCING WITH THE DEVIL
3
“Go easy, willya?” I said with a gasp. “I’m a Fed. My credentials are in the trunk, under my spare.”
The cop shouted to his backups, “Now he claims he’s a
Fed!” Then he yanked me off the hood and shoved me toward the rear of the car, his gun to my head. I stumbled to
the trunk.
Screwing the barrel into the base of my skull, he said,
“Open it, motherfucker.”
I used my key to open it. Shoving me into the arms of his
backups, the cop began poking around under my spare.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Keep my creds outta sight. I’m
still working this area undercover.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he replied. A moment later, he came up
with my shield and my identity card.
“Huh!” he grumbled. “Howd’ya like that? This guy is for
real.”
“Please, can you just leave my credentials there?” I said.
His response was to give me an ass-reaming, “You fuckin’
Feds are all the same. High and mighty, think your shit don’t
stink. Too good to even give us a goddamn courtesy call, telling
us that you’d be working our turf.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said apologetically. “But you know
how shit gets sometimes. We had to move quick on this one.”
What I neglected to tell him was that I had expressly been
ordered by my superiors at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms not to alert the local cops, since many of them
were suspected of being on the take.
The cop put his gun away and told the others to stand
down. He gave me back my own gun, and I got into my car
with Julio, who, fortunately, had not been roughed up too
badly. The cops let us drive away. We continued to cruise the
neighborhood for half an hour but could not find his connec-
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Louis Diaz
tion. So I dropped Julio off at a local watering hole and went
on my way. We’d look for his man on another day. If he got
wind of what the cops had done to us, it would probably boost
my credibility.
But I was still hurting and angry about the abuse I had
taken. Not that I faulted the police for stopping us. They did
right. But when I told that one cop I was a Fed, he’d crossed
the line.
My kidneys ached like hell. And I was getting more pissed
off by the minute. I had gotten into plenty of dustups before
with cops, including one humdinger during my youth that
nearly landed me in the slammer. I disliked many of them. The
way they could abuse their authority. The way they victimized
civilians who couldn’t fight back. Their big-mouth, big-shot
bullying attitudes.
It wasn’t anything new. Hell, I had grown up with the king
of the bullies.
Alfonso Diaz Canellada.
My old man.
Whether it was his bull-like pride, his hot Spanish blood,
his rigorous machismo, or the five awful years he had spent in
Franco’s prison camps during the Spanish Civil War, Papa had
been a brute.
Cruising around Brooklyn after the “tune-up” I had received
from the cops, I thought about all this. And I seethed about the
way that one big-mouthed, muscle-headed donkey had crossed
the line and put a beating on me.
I knew that these cops worked out of the Brooklyn North
Division. Because of the time they had stopped us, I figured
they were working an 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. duty tour. I looked
DANCING WITH THE DEVIL
5
at my watch. It was now 3:15 p.m. Some of them might be
getting off duty.
Heading over to the headquarters of Brooklyn North, I
spotted a few of their cars. I pulled into a spot across the street
and waited. At 3:45 p.m. I saw the big Irish palooka come out
and head toward his car. I stepped from my own car.
He was fiddling with his door lock when I came up behind
him, so at first he didn’t see me.
“Hey, officer,” I said. He turned to face me.
When he recognized me, he gave me this big shit-eating
grin. “What brings you around here?” he sniffed. For an instant, a vision of my old man flashed before my eyes.
“This,” I replied.
And throwing the full weight of my body into it, I hit him
with a thunderous left hook to the liver, a shot that could have
dropped a horse.
He fell to one knee, the air whooshing out of his lungs.
Holding his ribs and gasping, he managed to croak back at
me, “I guess we’re even now.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we are.”
I stuck out my hand. He took it, like a man. I turned,
walked slowly back to my car.
At least he had a sense of fair play.
But as far as what had happened earlier that day—the car
stop, the verbal abuse, and the beat-down—well, that was a
whole other story. So, in the end . . .
Fuck ’im.